Rufino Domínguez belongs
to the Mixtec indigenous group of Oaxaca. Coming from one of the poorest
states in Mexico, the Mixtecs have been forced to engage in a large-scale
migration to the Tijuana/San Diego borderland and beyond. Domínguez
is Vice Coordinator General of the Binational Oaxacan Indigenous Front
(Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional - FIOB), an organization
with offices in Oaxaca and California that works for the rights of indigenous
immigrant workers. You can reach the FIOB at fiob@igc.org.
Their web site is http://www.laneta.apc.org/fiob/.

In this article, Domínguez
passionately denounces the hazardous uses of pesticides in the fields where
migrants work, as well as the widespread environmental racism practiced
at the border. He focuses on indigenous migrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, who
represent a recent trend in immigration: that of indigenous Mexican and
Central Americans who do not exactly belong to the cultural, ethnic and
linguistic world of their mestizo counterparts. A version of this paper
was presented at the Second Annual Meeting on the Border Environment (Tijuana,
April of 1999).

Thousands of indigenous Oaxacans migrate each
year to Sinaloa, Sonora, Baja California, and the United States in search
of a better life. Poverty, marginalization, insufficient jobs, and erosion
of the semidesertic land brought on by the deforestation are all factors
leading up to this migration. Although immigration is a manner of surviving
as a family and as a community, and allows for some economic improvement,
there are very important disadvantages as well. I will focus on those impacting
the health of the migrants working in the places mentioned above.

The migrant Oaxacans work on the big farms picking
tomatoes, vegetables, fruit and cotton. They are not aware that the poisons
srpayed on the plants to kill the various types of insects, worms, and
blights, affect also the health of human beings and can even kill them.
We don't have an exact percentage of people affected, or killed by pesticides.
However, in almost every community where there is a strong migration, someone
has died at an early age due to problems with pesticides. In 1988, for
example, an entire family of five from Santa Catarina Noltepec died in
Baja California. They were poisoned by the pesticides sprayed on the fields
where they worked.

During the planting and harvesting season in the
Culiacán Valley, 20-30,000 indigenous people from Oaxaca, the majority
traveling as families of men, women and children, work in the fields picking
tomatoes. I worked there in 1984 and witnessed many things. For example,
the people applying the pesticides didn't use safety equipment to protect
themselves from danger or death. When I was about 7 years old I knew a young man
called Arcadio Gil González, whose job it was to apply the pesticides
on tomato plants. One day, we were told of his sudden death. He was a tall,
strong 18-year-old at the time, so everyone from San Miguel Cuevas, my
hometown, was talking about how the cause of his death had to do with the
"medicines" used on the plants. Supposedly, Arcadio overlooked his health
because this job paid slightly higher wages.

When I worked picking tomatoes in Culiacán
Valley, it was common to see planes spraying pesticides on the field right
next to us without any concern for our health. Runoff from the pesticides
seeps into the irrigation canals, and the empty pesticide containers are
dumped in ditches, contaminating the water and the environment. In the
evenings, and on Sundays, people swim in these poisoned canals, and even
drink water from them. In their kitchens they reuse the containers and
buckets found in the canals. The children often eat the tomatoes in the
fields without washing them, and with dirty hands. All these factors have
brought new illnesses such as cancer to our communities of origin.

The landowners have never been interested in protecting
the workers. The produce has always come first. The workers do not receive
training on preventive measures they could take to protect their health,
as well as an orientation prioritizing human life above the produce they
are harvesting. The same situation exists in Sonora, on a smaller scale,
since fewer people go there. However, in Baja California about 30-40,000
indigenous migrants arrive for the growing season. The majority work in
the San Quintín Valley, and just south of Ensenada. The same thing
that happens in Sinaloa happens there: innumerable intoxications due to
pesticide poisoning.

People often don't realize that one of the main
problems is that the majority of pesticides banned for use in the U.S.
are applied indiscriminately in Mexico. Why should this concern consumers
in the U.S.? Well, they are directly affected because they are eating produce
sprayed with these illegal pesticides in Mexico. Tomatoes, strawberries
and other produce are exported to consumers in the U.S. What this shows
is that a national orientation is not enough. It must be international
if the workers and the consumers are really going to be protected.

Despite tougher regulations, the U.S. is no exception
when it comes to endangering workers' lives with pesticide use. Over one
billion pounds of pesticide active ingredients are used in the U.S. each
year, 80% of which are used in agriculture, and another billion pounds
in the treatment of lumber. 80% of the indigenous people that live in this
country work in the fields where pesticides are sprayed. Despite protective
legislation, there have been cases of collective intoxication involving
over 30 workers in the cotton, grape and strawberry fields,. Although there
is even a state agency, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), symptoms
of pesticide poisoning occur every season in the U.S. Some symptoms regularly
suffered by farmworkers are: dizziness, headaches, weakness, fatigue, nausea,
vomiting, diarrhea, excessive perspiration, blurry vision, chest pains,
breathing difficulties, watery eyes, nose and mouth, muscle pains and cramps.
It is very clear that these symptoms are the result of the pesticides.

Although signs are posted everywhere in English,
and sometimes in Spanish, warning people not to enter the fields, many
workers that do not know how to read, so they remain unaware of the dangers.
They see some of the plants that we eat in Oaxaca growing among the produce,
and they take them home to use as food. Later, they become sick to their
stomach. Their children are born with these poisons in their system, since
their mothers worked in the fields. Although very nicely written laws exist
to protect the workers, farmers often don't obey them. In fact, some farmers
won't even take a worker suffering from pesticide intoxication to the doctor,
since the farmer could be fined for having violated the law! Since the
passage of Proposition 187, the situation has become even worse for the
undocumented workers. Cases of pesticide intoxication have occurred in
San Diego County, Ventura, San Joaquin Valley, and the Salinas Valley,
among other places.

Thus far I have only spoken of the impact of pesticides
on human beings. However, the situation is even more alarming. Pesticides
poison everything they touch: the harvest, the land, the air and the water,
regardless of the way in which they are applied. They are carried by the
wind many miles from where they are sprayed. They end up in the rivers,
lakes, streams, oceans, air, clouds, rain and snow on the highest mountains
of the world, as well as the groundwater. Pesticide residue has been found
in the bodies of fish, birds, wild animals, cattle, chicken, pigs, and
pets. Some have died from pesticide poisoning. The entire environment has
been polluted causing irreparable damage to Mother Earth. This has occurred
without respect to boundaries and without preventive measures designed
to protect all living things. The blame for this situation can be placed
on the multi-million dollar companies producing these poisons, most of
which are manufactured in the U.S.

Environmental Racism

I would like to speak now of environmental racism.
One case occurring at this moment is that of a community of 100 Mixtec
families, including children, in the city of Fresno, California. In addition
to risks involved with working in the fields, these families live on a
site contaminated by oil residues. They bought inexpensive mobile homes
to put on the land, without knowing that it was contaminated. Now several
people in these families have cancer, which might be linked to the contamination
of the land. They have been living there for about ten years and only recently
found out about this hazard because it was never discussed in the language
they understood, Mixtec. The EPA has stated that the residents were informed
of this problem several years ago. One of the wealthiest oil companies
in the world, Chevron, is directly responsible for selling this contaminated
land. Now they want to cover it with cement and consider it safe, putting
an end to the case. Nevertheless, experience has shown that if Anglo-Americans
were living on this land, they would take measures to detoxify it, as should
be the case. At present, there is a struggle going on to have these families
moved to a new place, with either the government or private agencies paying
the cost; which would be the decent, responsible thing to do.

In Lamont, a town in the south of the Valley,
they are trying to build a stable for 25,000 cows. There are many migrant
workers, some of them indigenous people, who live in the surrounding community,
and whose health would be impacted by this project. Dairies pollute the
environment for miles around because of the toxic substances they use.
These substances generate noxious smells and draw flies. People in this
area are very poor, so the creation of jobs was given priority over the
peoples' health. Moreover, since pollution control measures would cut into
the owners' profits, these dairies were created without regard the communities'
health needs. We are struggling with all our resources to halt the construction
of this diary.

FIOB's Achievements

In spite of these enormous problems, we have been
able to provide some solutions, especially with regard to organizing the
communities. Small organizations created around labor issues began forming
in communities of Oaxaca and other Mexican states in the early 1980's.
They sought to address problems such as the uses of pesticides in the fields
of Sinaloa, Baja California and the U.S. This set the stage for a unique
project: the Binational Oaxacan Indigenous Front (Frente Indígena
Oaquaqueño Binacional FIOB), which we created in spite of the many
difficulties arising in defending indigenous people in binational issues.

FIOB's program for action states: "We struggle
to turn back the economic and ecological damage to our places of origin
in Oaxaca by promoting projects which develop autonomy and sustainability
based on indigenous practices, combined with modern technology appropriately
applied in the places we reside in as migrants."

The following are examples of some important achievements
obtained in cross-border organizing.

1) In 1993, we made an agreement to collaborate
with the California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), which provides legal
advice to low income people free of charge. We have jointly started the
Project of Indigenous Peoples (Proyecto de Pueblos Indígenas), in
order to give orientation to the Mixtec-speaking farmworkers of their legal
rights. We calculate that some 60,000 Oaxacans work in California, and
we strive to make them aware of their right to demand safe and fair working
conditions. We have recently been working on legal procedures in Fresno
so that our people be relocated to a pollution-free area, at the expense
of the city and the government. We have even made available a toll-free
number: 1-800-MIXTECO.

2) In September of 1993, we signed an agreement
to collaborate with the United Farmworkers of America (UFW). As is known,
the Union has campaigned against the use of pesticides in the fields, boycotting
products such as grapes, which are cultivated with hazardous pesticides.

3) In the summer of 1997 we hired two Mixtec-speaking
women to work as community advisors to farmworkers on the hazards of pesticides.
This was done in collaboration with Pomona's Organización de
Líderes Campesinos. The project is critical, since women are
especially prone to pesticide-induced sickness, and often suffer from complications
during pregnancy.

Much has yet to be done in terms of binational
education, but so far our people are moving between Mexico and the U.S.,
carrying with them educational materials in our language such as videos
and announcements that can be circulated in the mass media. These materials
are an essential tool, given that many Mixtecs cannot read nor write.

All of these efforts have been made possible with
the financial backing of U.S. foundations, especially Oxfam America, which
has financed our work for the past two years. We have also received support
from other indigenous migrant communities in this country.

We have succeeded in raising awareness on health
care and on the environment through training and education. It's imperative
that we keep on teaching both farmworkers and landowners that we are all
affected by actions taken against the Earth, and that we need to stop this
ongoing self-destruction. The challenge is to continue this struggle so
that people know how to care for their health, and to free Mother Earth
from toxic poisoning.